The pickup truck is a utility vehicle with an open rear cargo area (commonly referred to as the “bed”) and a passenger cab located just behind the engine. Pickups are designed for hauling or pulling heavy loads.
Pickup trucks are manufactured by different automobile companies all over the world and are available in many different sizes and styles. Compact pickups, such as the Ford Ranger or Chevrolet Colorado, typically seat two people and have a smaller towing capacity. Full-size pickups can usually seat three or four people and have much larger engines. Pickup trucks can also be even larger with double rear tires (usually referred to as “duallies”) which serve to allow for an even heavier towing capacity. But regardless of the pickup size, all pickup beds commonly feature a cargo area with a tailgate that lowers to allow for loading and unloading.
Pickup beds come in sizes that range from short to long with a short bed stretching back a few feet behind the cab. A long bed may be as long as eight feet. The bed of the a pickup is most commonly formed with the rear of the cab making up one side of the cargo area with two sides being formed by raised panels extending from the cab with the final side being formed by the tailgate. The tailgate can be raised or lowered on a hinge to allow for loading and unloading.
Pickup trucks are most useful for hauling items that would be difficult to fit into a closed cab vehicle like a regular car or minivan. Additionally, pickup trucks are also useful for transporting items that are very heavy, even though they may not be large. Such heavy items may be difficult to lift into a smaller vehicle, but are easy to lift into the bed of a pickup truck. A problem arises, however, when a pickup truck user wishes to transport an item in the bed of his pickup that is either smaller than the pickup bed, or does not fit inside the bed when the tailgate is raised. In such a situation, the item is liable to slide around inside the pickup bed and be damaged by hitting the sides of the bed, or to fall out of the bed entirely because the tailgate cannot be raised all the way. In such situations, a need arises for alternate means for securing a load inside the bed of a pickup truck.
The prior art teaches several types of restraint systems that can be used in the bed of a pickup truck. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,964,771 to Callihan discloses a cargo restrainer that is a piece of flexible material that is suspended between two cords that run along the long sides of the flexible material. Once the flexible material is positioned over the cargo, the cords are tied down to anchors that are mounted inside the truck bed. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,763,944 to Fry discloses a tailgate barrier that is a net with incorporated stiffening members that attach to a mounted attach point inside the truck bed.
Other restraint systems include straps, clamps, buckles, and clips but nothing in the prior art provides a restraint system that is fully adjustable, expandable, shrinkable, and self-conforming. Likewise, the prior art restraint systems do not teach a system that does not require special hardware or tools in order to attach to the inside of a pickup truck bed. The present invention meets these needs and provides other related advantages.